Performance calibration in sport: Implications for self‐confidence and metacognitive biases

When people are asked to make judgments about their own performance, either retrospectively or prospectively, they typically overestimate their level of performance, leading some researchers to claim that overconfidence is a pervasive metacognitive bias. Evidence for such a trait in sport has implications for the way we assess confidence and for our understanding of athletes’ perceptions of their own abilities and their reactions to performance feedback. To gain a better understanding of this issue, we used the calibration paradigm to measure metacognitive bias in a sample of 54 male golfers varying widely in age (13 to 75 years) and ability level (1 to 27 handicap). Golfers were required to complete a putting task and a chipping task (20 trials each) after first estimating how well they would perform on each of the tasks. The exercise was repeated once. Results indicated that golfers tended to be reasonably well‐calibrated on the putting tasks but slightly overconfident on the chipping tasks used in this study. They were also overconfident on a test of knowledge of golf rules. There was no effect for level of expertise. Golfers differed in their ability to use feedback on the first set of trials to achieve better calibration on a second set of trials. Discussion centers on the potential benefits of using the calibration paradigm in a range of sports as an adjunct to assessments and interventions by sports psychologists.